First, let it be stated that I respect the individuals on the Del Mar City Council regardless of whether or not they agree with my position regarding STRs. I assume each council member serves out of a genuine desire to make Del Mar a better place. As I stated at last night’s meeting, they are up there, and I am not, doing the hard work in navigating this city forward during a time of community change. That said, I left last night’s discussion early (10pm) utterly frustrated that numerous previous council meetings, public input, a draft STRs ordinance based on this public input, a public workshop that was from my point of view indicative of the overall community feeling that STRs are an issue in our city, the implementation of a moratorium of new STRs in Del Mar, and a recommendation offering two options authored by Mr. Worden and Mr. Sinnott offering viable (albeit potentially difficult) paths for our city to implement, have all occurred in an absolute time vacuum. It was as if none of the hard ground work had been done, and the council was meeting for the first time on this issue. In short, respectfully, there was no backbone demonstrated by our city council.

Discourse became the excuse for non-action. The threat of legal action (which will take place regardless) all of sudden became a flash point as if it had not been previously considered. The lack of statistics became a rallying cry for inaction; something to hide behind preventing any movement on this issue. I distinctly remember statistics being shared at the public workshop in June. In short, my council let me, and I believe our city, down Monday night by not acting on an issue that needs action. I can only hope that our future council will act, and act in such a manner that pays tribute to the past involvement, action, and public debate centered on STRs in Del Mar.